This HDR thing - I don't get it

Cobravision

Well-known member
Jul 18, 2010
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I have the HDR feature on the camera. I've used them in the past, and usually there are 3 shots, a light, and dark, and mid. The program then combines the three into an HDR picture.

When I use the HDR mode on the Note 2, there are 2 pictures, one darker than the other. Is one of them the HDR version? Is there some manual post processing?

I don't get it.
 
HDR or High Dynamic Range is a way to have digital photographs look more like film. Since the introduction of digital cameras one of the problems we have is that film could capture more variations in light vs dark (dynamic range) so a photograph that included both a dark area and a lighter area both could have detail in both dark and light areas. With digital cameras this is not possible as current sensors lack the same dynamic range as film, so what you get is a loss of detail in either the light or dark area. This is aproblem particulaly in scenes like wedding photographs where you have a bride in white and a groom in black. HDR tries to combat this problem by taking one picture exposed to give light areas detail and another for dark areas, these are then combined with a neutral exposure (3 pictures) to give a final image. Of course a scene with movement in it won't give good results.
 
I'm familiar with HDR (unfortunately, the subject line makes it seem like I don't know what HDR is) but I don't get the implementation on the Note 2.

As near as I can figure, HDR mode gives you two pictures, one that's HDR and another that's normal. But is this a true HDR with multiple images combined or just some effect that increases contrast?
 
If I remember right it only takes one picutre but then applies a HDR algorithm to the shot it takes t9 get the HDR picture. The reason you get two pictures is one is the HDR version as where the other is the non HDR shot before the filter was applied.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 on Sprint using Tapatalk 2.
 
So it's really a filter and not an actual three picture process. That's what was confusing me.
 
When I take a hdr pic,, which is pretty much most of my pictures,, I only get one result to look at.. I sometimes take another picture of the same thing so I can compare and hands down the hdr pictures are always the better pics.

Note 2, it's true, ,size is everything!
 
When you have HDR on click on the options menu. It will let you choose the intensity, and you can also see that it will give you the option to save both the HDR and original, or HDR only.
 
When you have HDR on click on the options menu. It will let you choose the intensity, and you can also see that it will give you the option to save both the HDR and original, or HDR only.

Oh, cool, never noticed that. It's set how I want to keep it anyway. I only want to save hdr shot.

Note 2, it's true, ,size is everything!